She went against her Mother’s wishes, hopes and instruction. While she sat in that tattoo parlor chair with her leg stretched out she bit her lip, not just an effort to endure the needle digging into her skin but in anticipation of her Mother’s reaction when she found out.
He sat in a waiting room with several other people seeing the doctor about removing a tattoo. Once his life was filled with actions that had no real thought behind them, just a desire to have fun and be like his friends, now his desire was to obtain a rewarding career with a company that had a policy against tattoos.
These are just a few of the examples I’ve heard over the years as to why people get tattoos; rebellion and desire to follow the crowd, a permanent way to honor a dead loved one or a newborn child, to express themselves artistically, and some to show their faith.
When I walked into my first tattoo parlor at age 23, I wasn’t the one getting a tattoo. However, I walked out with one. Why? to attract attention to myself. The life I was living was totally against how my mother raised me. The second tattoo came years later, and one of my friends has a matching one. Why? So that she and I would always remember each other, and proof that we would always be friends. I have however many times regretted getting both tattoos; As the new director of a retirement home, I wore flesh colored band aids over them so that my employees and the elderly residents didn’t see them and form the wrong opinion of me. When my children got married I didn’t want to walk the isle drawing attention to myself, finding a dress that wouldn’t show them was a difficult challenge, and the process robbed me of joy.
I still today live with the consequences of my actions. I did know before I got the tattoo that the bible warned against marking or cutting our bodies; cuttings and markings were the sign of pagans, those who believed in idols and rebelled against God; Leviticus 19:28 “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves, I am the Lord. But for me that was the real problem, I wasn’t living according to God’s word then and I didn’t think the Old Testament applied to me. I wasn’t worshipping idols….and yet…. I was living for myself with no regard for Gods teachings.
There are more and more people getting tattoos today. And in some ways, they are becoming more acceptable. A lot of them are really truly works of art! The reasoning behind the art differs for each person, and yet one thing remains the same for us all….we want to draw attention to ourselves. Unfortunately many people judge a person by their outward appearance. So those of us with ink have an even harder time convincing people to look at our heart and not our art.
Join me…..and always strive to look past the outer appearance of a person and see who they are inside before we decide what kind of person they are. Let’s live lives that draw people’s attention to God and his love, not to our selves.
Lord, you know our heart. May we desire to live in your will and to have actions and speech that glorify your name. When we are in your will, do not let those who judge us wrongly bother us. In Jesus name Amen.